In September 2017, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) saw more than ten petitions filed in NPE campaigns involving networking and related technologies such as cybersecurity, including those waged by publicly traded Finjan Holdings, Inc.; prolific private litigant Realtime Data LLC; and Oyster Optics, LLC. Trial was instituted in September for an inter partes review (IPR) against Finjan and in IPRs against other frequent plaintiffs, including MyMail, Ltd. and Sound View Innovations, LLC. The Board issued final decisions in two covered business method (CBM) reviews against Uniloc Corporation Pty. Limited, the first AIA reviews against the NPE to reach final decisions since March 2016, and only the fourth to date. The PTAB also issued final decisions in IPRs against publicly traded Document Security Systems, Inc. as well as Acceleration Bay, LLC; Mobile Telecommunications Technologies, LLC; and Personalized Media Communications, LLC; among other NPEs.

International License Exchange of America, LLC (ILEA) has filed suit against ADTRAN (1:17-cv-00562), its third complaint brought this month after cases against Ericsson (1:17-cv-00507) and NTT (1:17-cv-00508). The NPE’s latest lawsuit accuses ADTRAN of infringing six former Nortel patents (5,959,990; 6,970,461; 7,274,704; 7,277,533; 7,478,167; RE40,999), two of which (the ‘704 and 533 patents) are here asserted for the first time. The company is alleged to infringe through the provision of various Ethernet switches, routers, and gateways; IP phones; and line cards; as well as through certain cloud management services. Meanwhile, ILEA dismissed its case against Ericsson without prejudice on May 11; that complaint accused the company infringing the ‘990 and ‘999 patents through various types of enterprise networking hardware.

Equitable IP Corporation has launched another new campaign, this one through Alabama subsidiary Pen-One Acquisition Group, LLC, separately accusing Apple (1:17-cv-00179) and Samsung (1:17-cv-00180) of infringing two patents (7,281,135; 8,374,402) generally related to the use of “digital signatures”, including facial and/or fingerprint recognition, and “pen-based computing devices” for authentication in commercial transactions. Apple is accused of infringing the ‘135 patent through the provision of Touch ID-compatible iOS devices along with Apple Pay, and the ‘402 patent through various iPhones (and their FaceTime cameras) along with the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil. Samsung is alleged to infringe the ‘135 patent through certain Galaxy S and Galaxy Note smartphones in conjunction with Samsung Pay, with the ‘402 patent asserted against a slightly larger range of those same phones.